American Eagle’s Fall 2025 campaign, headlined “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” is an admission that woke fashion advertisements do not sell.
The brand announced the collaboration on July 23. In the days immediately following, American Eagle stock climbed 18 percent. The video below has more than two million views on YouTube, American Eagle is trending on X, and several of the campaign’s Instagram posts have tens of thousands of likes. Everyone from Evie Magazine to MSNBC is talking about it.
Craig Brommers, American Eagle’s chief marketing officer, called the campaign a “reset” to “reclaim American Eagle’s jeans authority.”
Like most of the fashion industry, American Eagle has wallowed in DEI in the past. Their Fall 2019 campaign included an obscene music video by Lil Wayne. Many of the models in the video were visibly overweight and the Lil Wayne video was part of the company’s campaign to expand sizing options and “unleash the power of inclusivity.” In response, their stock tanked at the end of 2019 and into early 2020.
Victoria’s Secret cancelled its 2019 fashion show amid falling viewership numbers and an announcement that it wouldn’t be broadcast on TV. Prior to the show’s cancellation, leftist activists targeted the brand, accusing it of lacking diversity. The brand’s chief marketing officer was forced to apologize after saying that trans-identifying and plus-sized models had no place in the show. In 2021, Victoria’s Secret rebranded as “body positive” and “inclusive.” Sales tumbled. The show returned in 2024 with a transgender and “plus-size” models but was slammed as boring and woke. The company’s sales still haven’t recovered.
Likewise, Nike’s stock tanked after they partnered with social media personality Dylan Mulvaney, a man pretending to be a woman, to promote women’s activewear in 2023. Target’s market value also took a hit in 2023 after their Pride collection featured several children’s items, including “tuck friendly” swimsuits. The company reduced the size of their Pride 2024 collection and only offered it in select stores.
Brommers called signing Sydney “one of the biggest gets” in the brand’s history. “She is the girl who can play the red carpet but she’s also the girl next door, and that duality really defines Gen Z and Millennials,” Brommers said. Other phrases popular with Gen-Z like “it girl” and “main character energy” are sprinkled throughout the press releases. In addition to billboards in Times Square, Sweeney will appear in SnapChat, BeReal, and Instagram content, sometimes directly interacting with users.
Nostalgia also seems to be a favorite tool for Gen-Z brand engagement. The jeans styles featured in this year’s back-to-school collection, which are trending everywhere, are all inspired by 60’s, 70’s, and 90’s fits. Even the classic car featured in the Sweeney ad appeals to viewers’ nostalgia. Many are comparing “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” to Brooke Shields’ 1980 ads for Calvin Klein, which also sparked controversy. Other American brands like J. Crew and Ralph Lauren have also launched nostalgia-inspired collections in the wake of the 2024 election’s vibe shift.
The Sydney Sweeney ad campaign has experienced backlash for oversexualization and catering to the male gaze. Some of this criticism is fair — we’ve moved up from the third circle to the second, but we are still in hell — but the reality that sex sells is a conversation for another time. What’s worth noting is that many see hot women as MAGA-coded because the left has pushed so-called “body positivity” and radical ideology for so many years.
Unsurprisingly, members of the corporate media once again revealed themselves to be peddlers of woke ideology, jumping right to calling the ad racist and claiming that the “good jeans” pun is “Nazi propaganda.”
However, the return of beauty and sex appeal to the fashion industry is a sign that nature is healing itself. DEI and the glorification of obesity may be on their way out.